CAUTION: Spoilers for Outlander season 6.
In a shocking turn of events, Outlander season 6, episode 6 saw Claire’s apprentice Malva accuse Jamie of infidelity, claiming her unborn child is Jamie’s, but the aftermath forgets one critical detail from Outlander season 3. After Malva accused Jamie of cheating on Claire, Claire and Jamie spoke privately in the barn on Fraser’s Ridge and discussed the accusation, and much of Jamie’s storied past, all the while omitting a key detail. It was a detail that was already covered before in the show.
In the scene, Claire expresses her fear that Jamie is lying to her about the infidelity. She cites that her anger doesn’t stem from the thought of Jamie cheating with Outlander's tragically-fated Malva, but the idea of Jamie lying about it. Just as she begins to worry that Jamie might be capable of lying to her, Jamie quells her fear by revealing to her his indiscretion with Mary MacNab, a woman who worked at Lallybroch, while Claire was back in 1968 with Frank and Brianna. This confession soothes Claire, and the two find themselves realigned once again.
However, this Outlander scene leaves out one critical detail from Outlander season 3: Jamie has already previously confessed infidelity to Claire (albeit under different circumstances) after he told her about his son William, born of Geneva Dunsany while he was in England. Because of this omission, Claire’s fear that Jamie would be not only unfaithful, but lie to her when it comes to infidelity feels unfounded as Jamie has already had sex with someone else while Claire was in the future with the time-traveling Brianna and Roger and subsequently told the truth about it. Additionally, when Jamie previously confessed to sleeping with Geneva, Claire was not nearly as surprised as she was when Jamie tells her about Mary, and ultimately, repeating the same moment in Outlander season 6 falls slightly flat because of it.
In Outlander season 3, once Claire and Jamie are reunited back in the past, Jamie soon thereafter confesses his tryst with Geneva, explaining that he’s produced a son out of the encounter, and yet, throughout his story, Claire remains reserved and understanding. Of course, the circumstances were different than that of his tryst with Mary as Geneva coerced Jamie with blackmail, but when Jamie explains the situation regarding Geneva to Claire, it hardly seems to bother her. And yet, his affair with Mary MacNab yields an extremely heightened response from Claire, whose previous Outlander storylines have often felt faulty.
Additionally, though Jamie’s infidelity with Mary MacNab was more emotionally involved, the incident bore fewer ramifications than that of his affair with Geneva, which, of course, resulted in William. When Jamie tells Claire about Mary, she hardly re her, yet the stakes of the incident seem grander in scope, despite not having any long-lasting ramifications. Ultimately, while Claire’s fears about Jamie subside after this revelation, it seems odd that Claire would have such vastly different reactions to what is, essentially, the same confession a few years apart.
By this point in the series, Outlander has been grappling with complicated and storied pasts for many of its main characters. Outlander has also expanded beyond Jamie and Claire, and typically, Outlander juggles its side characters' backstories with near-perfect precision. However, with the recent Outlander season 6 episode, it feels odd that the show would seemingly forget such an important moment in both Jamie and Claire’s relationship.
New episodes of Outlander release Sundays on Starz.